Archive for category writing

not the end of the world

Mar 21

Posted by kate in dreamspinner, writing | No Comments

A few things to report:

1. Dreamspinner has a Goodreads group, and they’re looking for people to join. Tell your friends!

2. Speaking of Dreamspinner, I signed a new contract with them yesterday for an m/m contemporary novel due out this summer. I’ve been working on this particular novel for three years and I’m PSYCHED it’s finally making its way into the world. More on that once the ball gets rolling.

3. The hard drive in my beloved MacBook met its fate this weekend. The guy at the Apple Store Genius Bar could not have been more awesome, but there was ultimately nothing we could do. I have a shiny new hard drive now. Luckily, I have a somewhat recent system backup, but I ultimately lost a few weeks of work. It was upsetting, but I spent a big chunk of yesterday piecing together what I had and messing around with the new version of Scrivener (which I hadn’t had much chance to do since I bought the upgrade). (Why yes I am kind of a Mac nerd. How could you tell?)

It’s funny; I think computer issues are up there with 21st century writer’s greatest anxieties, and I was really devastated to have lost some of the work I’ve done recently, but you know, in the grand scheme of things? It’s not that big of a deal. I mean, I can rebuild it. (We have the technology.)

4. Just a reminder, if you’re in the New York City area, come by the Rainbow Book Fair this Saturday. I’ll be there with a bunch of other Dreamspinner authors. Details on the events page.

space

Sep 5

Posted by kate in writing | No Comments

I’m a creature of routine, but it’s fun to shuffle things up sometimes. I’m currently in the process of converting the spare room in my apartment into an office. The main goal is to have it be a room in which I want to write. I find that a writing space has to be Just Right for me to be able to do anything effectively.

Coincidentally, Victor J. Banis wrote a post at Jessewave earlier this week about shutting out the outside world to beat writers block. As I commented in the post, I actually do a fair amount of my writing in cafes. The reasons are two-fold: 1) I have a terrible time focusing on only one thing at a time and my mind is often all over the place, so I can concentrate on one task (writing, for example) if there is stuff going on around me that part of my brain can work to tune out; 2) I have found that my apartment is not that conducive to being productive. Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t have a designated writing space. I can write while lounging on my couch if I make myself, but I find my mind wanders. Generally, sitting at a desk (or a table in a cafe) in a real chair helps me concentrate on the task at hand. Also, cafes have coffee and pastries.

So, when I started thinking about how to make my “office” an effective space, I thought, well, I could try to re-create a cafe environment, only without all the people. So: coffee and pastries, check! I just bought a French press, and it serves this purpose pretty well. (I like my coffee strong enough to punch me in the face.) Moving the desk so that it faces the window gives me something to look at while I’m sitting at the desk, although, as you can see, I mostly only have a view of the big apartment building across the street.

I’m having a shut-in weekend. I have three days in which I don’t have plans and don’t have to go to the office, so I figured I’d have a few marathon writing sessions in my new office. It’s going pretty well so far. I mean, I’m still easily distracted—I took a break yesterday to read an entire novella; I keep finding music on my computer that I forgot I downloaded; oh, hey, is that Legally Blonde on TV?—but I’m getting a lot done. So it’s a good space.

if nothing else, I am a huge dork

Aug 16

Posted by kate in media, navel gazing, vanity, writing | No Comments

Elisa posted an interview with Ryan Field that I thought was kind of interesting (and a good test of my Italian skills; that is one of my secret talents). Here, I will translate for you (this is the second question):

What kind of readers are you addressing? Those who believe that sex and love are inseparable. And I think that readers are always looking for this union. I also consider that readers are looking for novels with a happy ending that raises them from the stress of real life. Reading a novel, regardless of genre, must help them escape their problems. And from the letters I get, it seems to me that readers are eager to escape reality.

(Italian is not my first language, obviously, so apologies if I goofed anywhere.)

I’ve been thinking a lot the last few days about my own expectations as a reader and why I like romance novels and what I want out of them and so on. I do like realistic, slice-of-life sorts of novels. I like fantasy, too. For example, I just read Jungle Heat by Bonnie Dee. I had some niggles in terms of things I didn’t think were quite realistic, but I really enjoyed the book as a fantasy, insofar as my thinking was, “I’m not sure this could have happened, but wouldn’t it have been cool if it did?” That’s maybe the crux of historical or speculative fiction. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in the stuff I’ve been writing lately, which has definitely been more on the fantastical end of the spectrum. I don’t really know if ghosts exist, but what if they did? How cool would it be if someone had lived through hundreds of years of human history? If someone from 1850 were plunked into 2010, what would they think of all this? Pros, cons, bad, good, what would happen? These are things I think about when contemplating what worlds and ideas I could explore as a writer.

Romance is a different kind of fantasy, though, often “realistic” in that there are characters who live in our world, characters that make mistakes and have mundane jobs and are mostly like us. But romances also take us to world where everyone has a true love and lives happily ever after. Where we get into the heads of characters who lead different lives than we do, characters for whom good things happen. And maybe, as Ryan Field says in the article, part of the fantasy of erotic romance is that sex and love are the same, that one is borne of the other or is an expression of the other or both. Maybe part of the fantasy of romance is that we read these novels and think, “Life could be this way.”

I’ll tell you what my fantasy is: for the sun to break through the thunderstorm currently raging outside my window, and for a good night’s sleep after almost two weeks of travel (I spent the weekend traveling around New England with my family). Actually, if the orange glow on the buildings across the street from my living room window means anything, it’s that my first wish is coming true. Sleep next!

back from vacation; never say never

Aug 11

Posted by kate in in hot pursuit, vanity, WIP, writing | No Comments

I came back from Florida with a burn/tan, and was feeling relaxed enough that it’s been tricky getting back into the groove of my life this week. It’s funny; in some ways, I just fall back into routine because it’s… routine. But it took some self-cajoling to get back to writing after basically taking a week off.

Although, I did some thinking about Noah. I set that novel in Tampa primarily because it was a city in Florida with which I was familiar. I have a friend who lives there, I’ve visited a few times, I knew there was a decent-sized gay community in St. Pete. Last week, I spent time in South Florida and the Keys in an honest-to-God resort just like the one Noah spent most of In Hot Pursuit in with friends (two other women and a gay man). It was sort of interesting to examine that experience in the wake of my recently-published novel, picking apart things I got right in my novel and things I might have done a little differently (mostly, if I had it to do over, I might have included more details about the setting). My vacation involved spending a lot of time on the beach (and getting roasted by the sun while I read romance novels, natch) with the occasional foray into various nearby cities. We even stopped in a gay bar in Key West that reminded me a little of Shanley’s from my novel.

One thing I really love to see in a novel I’m reading is a setting well rendered. I’m in awe of writers who make that setting another character, or who draw it so well that it feels like you’re there. That’s one thing I’m working on, to make my setting more fully realized.

I’m trying some new things now. I think I’m constantly developing as a writer, meaning both that I’m trying to become a better writer in terms of craft and also that I’m willing to take on different genres and topics as I go. When I first started writing seriously, I wrote a lot of thinly-veiled autobiographical stories, but I find that, as I develop as a writer, exploring completely different characters and experiences and worlds is increasingly appealing. I’ve gone from not having any particular desire to wade into the paranormal/fantasy arena to the last couple of months starting to write speculative fiction for the first time ever. And it’s a great amount of fun! Who knew?

I think the lesson is just to be open to everything. I have in the last year or so read and written things I don’t think I would have gotten anywhere near five years ago, but as I develop as a writer, I want to try new things, explore new worlds, do what I can to develop as a writer.

And I have all new respect for spec fic writers who do it well. I mean, on the one hand, you get to make shit up, but on the other hand, you have to make shit up! In some ways, it’s easier to set novels in the real world (especially if you, like me, set the majority of your stories in the city where you live) and you could make the argument that writing fantasy means you don’t have to research, but you DO have to build your world. And that’s a real stretch of one’s creative power.

Anyway, these are just some things I’ve been thinking about. I’m traveling a lot the rest of this month, so I’m a little nervous about squeezing in time to write, but I’m really enjoying the WIPs I have going right now, and that’s kind of half the battle right there.

on the upswing

Jul 13

Posted by kate in writing | No Comments

Watch me bury the lead.

I’m a fast writer. I make up for that by being a slow editor, but when I need to, I can churn out a lot of text. Thus I, in good faith, made a commitment to myself to write 60,000 words this July. This seemed doable; I’m a NaNoWriMo veteran. I wrote 92K words last November. I churned out a 50K-word first draft in 30 days once without really breaking a sweat. (Although that was almost three years ago and I’m STILL revising that one; see, slow editor!) So I thought 60K would be a challenge but one I could rise to, but it’s proving to be a greater challenge than I anticipated. This is in part because I had other things to do July 4th weekend (house guests, baseball games, and cookouts, oh my!). I found that, 10 days into July, I’d hardly written anything.

But I had a random spot of good/bad fortune in that my access to the Internet has been unusually limited over the last couple of days. So I’ve found myself writing. And I’m really excited about my current WIP, which is my first attempt to write something speculative (there are ghosts!). Yesterday evening rolled around and I felt triumphant for having written 5,000 words and finally having found a direction for this novel that I’ve been only just sort of poking at for the last couple of months.

So then I got home and found a new contract in my inbox. That’s right, folks, the ink is drying on the contract for my second novel. I’m really excited about this one. More details on that forthcoming once I know about release dates and things.

So it was a great day for writing! Let’s hope this streak continues.

on rejection and other fun things

Jul 8

Posted by kate in writing | No Comments

Everyone has to deal with rejection. It’s one of those unfortunate facts of life. You interview for jobs you don’t get. You apply for schools you don’t get into. I auditioned for orchestras a number of times when I was in my early twenties, and I can tell you at what point in each failed audition that it started to go south. (For example, When I was maybe 20, I went to an audition in which 40 people were trying to fill 2 slots, so the odds weren’t real high to begin with. But I practiced my ass off and went into that audition and not only nailed the piece I’d prepared, but that piece had been a favorite of the orchestra director. It was a Vivaldi concerto, I think. He was so impressed he handed me the toughest sight-reading sample, some Mendelssohn concerto with a melody written several lines above the staff, and all knowledge of how to play in 7th position or wherever this thing was written flew right out of my head. The orchestra director said, “Come on, you know this one.” Though Mendelssohn has turned out to be the scourge of many an orchestra audition for me—this happened again a couple of years ago, actually—I did not know this particular piece of music, and my brain completely shut down. Thus, rejection.)

This is kind of lame, but I like competition reality shows. At least the contestants have to have a skill. And there are always a couple of contestants who, when they start failing—making mistakes, winding up in the bottom of the rankings—they completely implode. Which I think says something about the nature of rejection. The rejection itself is not necessarily a testament to your skill (or maybe it is, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume some talent) but skill certainly comes into play with how you deal with that rejection. You can let it get to you, let it control how you work from that moment on, let it be an excuse to stop trying. Or you can pick yourself up, try again, and do things better the next time.

Getting rejected for anything is deeply unpleasant, to put it mildly. I’ve gotten a few writing rejections recently, and I find it frustrating, but I think the real key is to remember that one agent/publisher may not like something that another loves, or I wrote something that is good but not right in tone or theme for the person I submitted it to, or what have you. My method is to take a day to mourn the opportunity, then to get back to the writing, to figure out what, if anything, needs to be fixed in the manuscript, to send it back out again. I can only hope my persistence is rewarded.

poetry and other non-noveling pursuits

Apr 18

Posted by kate in poetry, writing | 1 Comment

I had some technical difficulties (and a zany schedule) that kept me from doing much writing this weekend, but getting a break from the computer was kind of refreshing.

I learned this morning that April is National Poetry Month. So let’s talk about poetry.

My favorite poet is Elizabeth Bishop. Poetry is such a subjective thing that it’s hard to say why. I was introduced to her poetry by a high school English teacher—a teacher who had a significant impact on me, who really changed who I was as a writer—so there’s that. Bishop also wrote such brilliant imagery, and her poetry is real and visceral, though often not personal. One of my favorites is “In the Waiting Room,” the meaning of which is a little hard to latch on to, but it’s about childhood and identity and place, especially this stanza:

I said to myself: three days
and you’ll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
–I couldn’t look any higher–
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Some other poems I really like, of the sort I go back to and reread, by other poets include “For the Union Dead” by Robert Lowell (I thought of the poem the first time I was in Boston Common as an adult and saw the relief of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment marching towards battle) and “The Second Hour of the Night” by Frank Bidart, which I first read in an anthology I bought for an English class in college and was sort of mesmerized by (more on Frank Bidart). That’s what good poetry should do: surprise you, move you, make you think, make you remember.

It’s probably not a coincidence that all of these poets knew each other and probably drew from each other’s work; I think there’s something stylistically similar at work, though it’s difficult to articulate what that is.

I used to write a lot of poetry, but hardly ever do anymore. I like the medium, but am not motivated to write poetry most days. I did write one in February that I just posted here; it was kind of a dare (for some online friends, for myself) and I wrote a sestina. It’s a weird and difficult form. One wonderful example is (natch) by Elizabeth Bishop (and you can read it here). I posted the poem here, you can find it on the freebies page.

If you have favorite poets/poems, please post them in the comments!

a few random thoughts

Apr 4

Posted by kate in ebooks, fluff, new york, WIP, writing | No Comments

Spring is for sure my favorite season. I like to take walks and I like flowers and I think the first couple of weekends of spring, when everyone is anxious to spend time outside, are like waking up from a long hibernation. This was an especially snowy, unpleasant winter, so it’s kind of nice to see lots of sunny days in the forecast. I took a long walk through the neighborhood this afternoon, admiring all the flowers blooming. I always forget how many cherry trees there are in Brooklyn until they start blooming in April.

I’m finishing up a novella that takes place during the winter, and it’s very hard to write about blizzards when it’s so sunny and warm out!

My Kindle might be developing an inferiority complex now that the iPad is out. I have some reservations about the iPad—I wish it ran OS X, I’m worried reading novels on a backlit screen will give me headaches, I’ve heard the iBooks store (or whatever they’re calling it) is still kind of clunky, though I imagine that will be improved—and have other more essential gadgets to buy first—my ancient iPod is about to kick it—but, golly, it’s pretty.

Speaking of the Kindle, I made a vow a couple of weeks ago that I would not buy any more books for it until I made a serious dent in the backlog of books on it. I did read a number of books that have been sitting on it for months, but ultimately, I’m weak, and I just bought two new books and am eying a third. It’s a disease, my need to buy books!

On the other hand, I’m finding that one of my favorite Sunday-afternoon leisure activities is to sit by the windows in my room and read as the sun sets.

I’m trying to turn my attention to a different work-in-progress right now, which is tough. I’m having trouble writing the end of the first chapter, but know pretty well how the later chapters shake out, so I can’t decide if it’s worth it to skip this and come back to it later, to write what I know will come easier, or to force myself to work out the problems with the first chapter before moving forward. Dilemma!

Well. I hope you all have a lovely spring week. I’ve still got a little bit of sunlight left tonight. I should make the most of it.

gimme a break

Mar 27

Posted by kate in in hot pursuit, reviews, writing | No Comments

Firstly, In Hot Pursuit got 4 cherries from Whipped Cream Reviews.

So I took some time off from writing this week. I’m normally a pretty self-disciplined writer, making it a goal to write at least a little every day. I lead a fairly busy life, and I think you have to have some measure of self-discipline in order to make things happen. It’s tough, though, making the time for writing on top of everything else; I suspect that is most writers’ chief complaint. There are just not enough hours in the day. (I can’t even imagine how writers with children manage.)

Anyway, I had a week where I had to take a break from writing. I think sometimes I just need to clear my head and reboot. I put in some extra hours at the day job, I saw some friends, I watched a lot of trashy television. I sometimes also just need some distance from what I’m working on so I can look at it again with fresh eyes; I’m more likely to catch consistency errors that way.

The good news is that my brain is back functioning again; I woke up this morning, started thinking about a WIP, and came up with a whole bunch of ideas. And now I have coffee, so forward progress!

method and madness

Feb 21

Posted by kate in strategies, WIP, writing | No Comments

One of the things I’m coming to realize about myself as a writer is that I tend to jump in feet first and then realize once I’m treading water that I should have had a better plan. So, usually I’ll start off with an idea, then I’ll write a couple of chapters, then I’ll go back and write an outline.

I’m working on a murder mystery right now. I started writing it with only one idea in my head: wouldn’t it be funny if a bestselling crime-fiction writer got tangled up in an actual crime? I had a vague notion of who the bad guys and suspects would be, but I didn’t really sit down and fathom out the crimes themselves until yesterday. Which is a problem, because all the best mystery writing has clues dropped from page one. I find that the mysteries I enjoy the most are the ones with the endings that surprise you, but that have dropped clues all along that you find when you go back and reread. As a writer, it’s tough to insert those clues if you don’t have all the evidence gathered.

So I drew a map. I find that drawing can help me visualize something, especially something as convoluted as a mystery plot. (I also draw maps when I set novels in fictional towns, and I’ve been known to draw family trees when I’m writing about big families, and other things in a similar vein.) So I took a fuzzy picture of the map I drew yesterday. You get fuzzy, because it contains spoilers; the book’s not even done, but should I someday finish it and publish it, I’d hate to ruin it far in advance.

So there’s a little taste of what I’m working on. A complicated mystery with a little bit of a twist in the ending. So now I have to go back and edit to put in more clues. And also fact check my police procedure. And also make sure the pacing on the romance subplot(s) works. So much to do!